National
Water Center, Eureka Springs,
Arkansas
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celebrating water
Present Moment, Wonderful Moment* 6. Turning on the
Water Even if we know the source of our water, we still take its appearance for granted. But it is thanks to water that life is possible. Our bodies are more than seventy percent water. Our food can be grown and raised because of water. Water is a good friend, a bodhisattva, which nourishes the many thousands of species on Earth. Its benefits are numberless. Reciting this gatha before turning on the faucet or drinking a glass of water enables us to see the stream of fresh water in our own hearts so that we feel completely refreshed. To celebrate the gift of water is to cultivate awareness and help sustain our live and the lives of others. 7. Washing Your Hands Water flows over these hands. Our beautiful Earth is endangered. We are about to exhaust her resources by polluting her rivers, lakes, and oceans, thus destroying the habitats of man species, including our own. We are destroying the forests, the ozone layer, and the air. Because of our ignorance, fears, and hatred of one another, our planet may be destroyed as an environment hospitable to human life. The Earth stores water, and water gives life. Observe your hands as the water runs over them. Do you have enough clear insight to preserve and protect this beautiful planet, our Mother Earth? 40. WATERING THE GARDEN Water and sun Water is the balm, or nurturance, of compassion which has the capacity to restore us to life. The Bodhisattva of Compassion is often depicted holding a vase of water in her left hand, and a willow branch in her right. She sprinkles down compassion, like drops of nurturing balm, to revitalize tired hearts and minds weak from suffering. Rain enlivens crops and protects people from hunger. Watering the garden, the compassionate rain falls on the plants. Our respect and gratitude for this gift of water helps us heal ourselves and transform even a desert into an immense, green ocean. When we offer water to plants, we offer it to the whole Earth. When watering plants, if we speak to them, we are also speaking to ourselves. We exist in relationship to all other phenomena. As we water plants, we can speak to them: Dear plant, you are not alone. Papermaking as a Vast
Reservoir  The eco-philosophical female-driven work I’ve come to in my visual art, writing and bookmaking was entered via papermaking—with its vast teachings of biodiversity origins, seed, its respect for life-death-seasonal rebirth cycles, by teaching timing, manner of growth and harvesting, and with its opportunities to learn to communicate with the many indigenous, eastern and western culture: their needs, their practices, their wisdom, their failings. I now often use plants without using them, for their story, four understanding our story. I now reuse clothing not only for making paper but recycled as canvas for paper paintings poured on my vacuum table, which become magic veils and ecological indictments. As a bioregionalist I wish to respect the principles of local sustainable action, of non-violence to our life systems, of nature’s biomass restoring itself, and the self-propagation, self-regulation, self-education, self-fulfillment put in place when all species are allowed to interrelate. From 1975, catapulted into all possible ways to make paper, I did works installed by different curators from my given parts into cascading water like sculptures that kept the imprint of water being poured. I made paper clothes to wear like skin. I explored the experience of pulp as art when wet, Paper Pools. Making a paper drum on a circle of copper introduced the equal weight of sound — a tympani resonance that tuned with change of the air’s moisture. I installed No More Water — seeds and the pulp-dribbled word water shriveled up in their parched wave of earth. At a Shasta Bioregional Gathering grassroots people renamed themselves bunchgrass people. I was one of them. Wildness reclaimed. I organized Artists Perform From Their Ecological Source: Working to Re-Open Major Life Systems for a weeklong Med-Art Conference. I composted Unframed Intelligence with red worms in a neighborhood store window for three months, transforming food scraps and handmade paper flag into a statement on the Gulf War. I called my art an inquiry into human-earth health — a forest-work Displacement View in Banff, Canada. Radical Food in Vienna, the revisiting of SuperSkyWoman at my birthplace, Genova, Italy. On an east facing lookout on Maui, rain pools of reddest earth pulled my back-walking mud-rubbed hands and feet into timeless time for a video The Future of Hands and Feet. Presently I am researching how to tie the papermaking process
into the timeless time With my newly attained Permaculture Apprentice certification I
inaugurate a new art Wolfgang Vaatz: Sculpting with Clay and
Water
The fascination of water for humans is age old: water is the beginning and catalyst of life — of any form of life on earth. Therefore, water is a precious resource, even if one does not live in an arid environment. Yet, urbanization, industrialization, over-fertilization of farm land have done harm to the water. Today, water is more often polluted then clean and clear. A pond water–sculpture, representing an environmental installation where the water plays the role of the performing artist, offers a lab situation. The interplay of water, sculpture, and pond-life constitutes a system that reflects in a much smaller scale our global system. The viewer, participating in the installation, will notice the system’s tangible balance, its cyclical nature, and its meaningful beauty. For example, in spring time, there will be an algae bloom in an outdoor pond. After an explosion of growth, most algae will die until a normal level is reached. Algae do not have to be fought with chemicals. Wolfgang’s work is a form of non-verbal communication,
addressing people regardless of their age, educational, or cultural background. The aesthetic and
performance of each water-sculpture express a deep appreciation of nature. Both, visual shape and sound have to enhance each other and are “tuned” by
the artist as if they were "tuned" by the erosional forces of nature
over time. The result is a richness in experience that might challenge the viewer to open
up his or her attitude toward an increased sensitivity for nature." In this
sense, his work can remind us that we are all linked together: humans, art, and nature. water soul
like a human soul
under the Water and the Human Spirit Water is Life...in much more than the physiological sense. It
not only makes life Water is practical, mystical and magical. It delights us in
many forms: a sparkling We did a presentation in September 1996 designed to be a rich
sensory reminder Patricia is an experienced social and environmental activist,
designer, lecturer and educator Gayle has been exploring the human attraction to water and how
to bring it into the built Living Water, Urban Vitality: Betsy Damon is the founder of Keepers of the Waters, a not-for-profit foundation committed to involving artists, scientists, and citizens in projects that improve water sources and educate about the importance of water quality. Her most recent success is a 5.9 acre "Living Water Garden" on the banks of the Fu-Nan rivers in the city of Chengdu, China. Designed to resemble the shape of a fish, the unique park draws water from the polluted river, naturally directs it through a series of flow forms and constructed wetlands, and releases the cleaned water back into the river. The park also includes 100 species of trees and plants selected by a local botanist, a living water fountain, sculptures that mimic the movement of mountain streams, and a 400-seat amphitheater for lectures and performances. The realization of the project is even more impressive than its design. Faced with great resistance from engineers and government officials who preferred traditional flood walls and dams, Damon nurtured relationships and persuaded the city government to help build the park. Now complete, the project has been visited by mayors of ten major Chinese cities and has been declared a national model by the government in Beijing. Water Divine At long last, after five years of hard labor, financial sacrifice, and the exclusion of a social life, the rustic cabin in the Adirondack Mountains where my husband and I would be making our permanent home was almost ready for occupancy. We had done things backwards in one respect — we had left the issue of water to deal with last. Ordinarily, it is a good idea to have your well dug before or during construction, but we didn’t get around to it until just before we moved in. In the back of our minds, we had always felt assured that there must be water on the property because of the abundance of streams and springs throughout the area. I had tried some amateur dowsing myself and had a feeling about a couple of spots, which later turned out to be where we located the well. However, we called in a professional — known local dowser Ted Kaufman, who has made dowsing his life’s avocation. In addition to finding water, he has located many people who have been lost up in these mountains and lakes, by dowsing with plumb bob over a map. Not only was it very interesting to watch him work, but he got the whole family involved in the process, giving the children coat hangers to test their own natural ability. Ted was able to tell us various things about the vein of water: the location, direction of flow, depth, gallons per minute. We followed his advice, which proved to be right on target. Strangely, (or not) I had had a dream about a very powerful
source of water up behind the house, and I wanted to test it out on Ted. In the dream I had found
myself standing on a place we referred to as “Sean’s Spot” because our
sensitive little son especially liked to hang around there. I could feel the ground
actually rumbling under the rock I was standing on, so powerful was the flow of water
beneath my feet. Ted and his divining rod tuned into the reality of the dream immediately. He informed me that a “dome” was located there. I was
unfamiliar with the term, so he explained that it was a major “column” of water coming
from deep within the earth, with smaller underground streams radiating out from it,
one of which was the vein we tapped our well into. Through further reading, I later
discovered that many ancient sacred sites were originally built over springs
like this one. In fact, they are the present-day sites of many cathedrals because in
the Christians’ attempts to obliterate pagan places of worship they actually pre-empted these potent energy centers. So, you could say that we were There is another nearby source of water where we prefer to get our drinking water. It is a turn-of-century dug well, about twenty feet deep, expertly lined with cobblestones, constructed in anticipation of a potentials settlement when this area was being considered as a garnet mine site. Before I knew this, I used to wonder why I sometimes dreamed of phantom houses and dirt roads beyond us where there is actually nothing except what-might-have-been. While walking to the well, you are likely to see a raven or two flying over from Whortlberry Mountain. On one memorable trip, I answer a male’s raucous mating call, quite a throaty squawk. He flew right over my head, wings whipping audibly, then continued on his way, no doubt disappointed that I didn’t have shiny black tail feathers. Once the matter of the water supply for our house was settled, our dream of living up on our own Adirondack mountain finally became a reality. Chop Wood, Carry Water
My home, a small octagonal cabin is perched upon I heat with wood and haul my water. Once a month I load my truck with 5-gallon water jugs, drive over to the neighbors well, and haul 100 gallons of sweet roubideaux well water back home. I use a tip-bottle for drinking, a jug with a spigot for washing dishes, a solar shower bag for washing me and my dog, and rain collected from my roof to water the garden. I use buckets and sawdust for my toilet, rinsed fresh daily with the used wash water, all rinse water is then used on my flower gardens and fruit trees. In other words, I always use my collected water three times: first to wash, then to rinse, then to water. Not having running water creates a consciousness like no other. Away from home, it is difficult for me to let water “run”. For I crave to capture every drop for thrice use. I prefer wild water, that is, water raw from the groundwater freshly captured from its dark underground habitat, living water. Spring water comes to mind, down my mountain lies an untapped spring near my future house site. It emerges from a dark cave at the base of a limestone bluff. I have designs upon that spring; a limestone clad springhouse will feed a series of swirling pools siphoned off into my gardens, orchards and new home. Chop wood. Carry water. Paradise. Jacqueline Froelich is co-founder of the National Water
Center, The Ozarks Area Community Congress and The North American Bioregional Congress. She edited and illustrated
“We All Live Downstream” and “Aquaterra: Metaecology and Culture. She is currently news
producer at KUAF Public Radio at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. |
National Water
Center Barbara Helen
Harmony :: email:
peace@ipa.net
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Since his childhood, Wolfgang was always drawn to mud,
water, and aquatic life. Building his first pond when thirteen, he “started” his
artistic career painting landscapes, and went
as a young adult back to Namibia, his country of birth. In the Namibian desert, he studied the marks that wind and water
action had made on the surface. Ever since then, he has been intrigued by art, created by processes in
nature, such as a
water flow, offering him inspirations for his experimental work.
water
Each morning I variably wake up to breezes, birdsongs, pollen wafts, silent snows, guinea
squawks, thunderstorms, acorn assault, and frog croaks, depending upon the whim of the
season.